said it was a beautiful profession that had for its
object the alleviation of human pain. Freddy jealously tried to get in a
good word for boxers, but nobody would listen to her except me. It was
all Jones, Jones, Jones, and the triumphs of modern medicine. Altogether
he sailed through that whole day with flying colors, first with the
housemaid, and then afterward at church, where he was the only one that
knew what Sunday after Epiphany it was. He made it plainer than ever
that he was a model young man and a pattern. Mrs. Matthewman compared
him to her departed husband, and talked about old-fashioned courtesy and
the splendid men of her youth. Everybody fell over everybody else to
praise him. It was a regular Jones boom. People began to write down his
address, and ask him if he'd be free Thursday, or what about Friday, and
started to book seats in advance.

That evening, as I was washing my hands before dinner and cheerfully
whistling _Hiawatha_, I became conscious that Jones was lolling back on
a sofa at the dark end of the room. What particularly arrested my
attention was a groan--preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs. It
worried me--when everything seemed to be going so well. He had every
right to be whistling _Hiawatha_, too.

"What's the matter, Jones?" said I.

He keeled over on the sofa, and groaned louder than ever.

"It isn't possible--that she's refused you?" I exclaimed. He muttered
something about his mother.

"Well, what about your mother?" I said.

"Westoby," he returned, "I guess I was the worst kind of fool ever to
put my foot into this house."

That was nice news, wasn't it? Just as I was settling in my head to buy
that Seventy-second Street place, and alter the basement into a garage!

"You see, old man, my mother would never consent to my marrying Eleanor.
I'm in the position of having to choose between her and the woman I
love. And I owe so much to my mother, Westoby. She stinted herself for
years to get me through college; she hardly had enough to eat; she...."
Then he groaned a lot more.

"I can't think that your mother--a mother like yours, Jones--would
consent to stand between you and your lifelong happiness. It's
morbid--that's what I call it--morbid, just to dream of such a thing."

"There's Bertha," he quavered.

"Great Scott, and who's Bertha?"

"The girl my mother chose for me two years ago--Bertha McNutt, you know.
She'd really prefer me not to marry at all, but if I must-